Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort's lawyer on Tuesday said his legal team chose not to mount a defense in his trial over alleged tax and bank fraud because U.S. prosecutors had not met the legal bar needed to prove their case.

Turkey's foreign minister said on Tuesday he hoped his country and Russia could find a solution over the northern Syrian region of Idlib, a rebel-held enclave which the Syrian government says it aims to recapture.

THERESA May's Government is "deeply concerned" about the 141 migrants onboard the stranded rescue ship Aquarius, a Foreign Office spokesman said, before highlighting the "shared challenge" of "irregular migration" in Europe.

RUSSIAN President Vladimir Putin is set to meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin on Saturday for crunch talks on the contentious Baltic Sea gas pipeline, a German government official has confirmed.